Tag Archives: Zoey Cole

Comic books, webcomics, graphic novels, memoirs set in graphic novels, zines. The comic book is back, and Nobrow Press is right in the midst of the flurry. On June 23, Hyperallergic detailed Nobrow Press, highlighting the 17×23series which includes Jen Lee’s Vacancy.

The 17×23 series is named for the 17 by 23-centimeter size of its volumes—a size that gives emerging writers like Lee the chance to work in a larger format, without going full volume. As with most of her work, Lee’s new book imagines animals sans the support of humans: “I love thinking about if critters would have a riot at us not existing anymore, or would some who depended on our luxuries be weeded out?”

And, the 17×23 series challenged Lee to create something more extensive, to grow her art: “The biggest challenge with Vacancy was that I had to get the complete story down first. . . .With my webcomic . . . I don’t know what’s going to be in the next update until I sit down and do my first thumbnails.”Thunderpawis Lee’s delightful, moving webcomic, which set her up nicely for her work with Nobrow Press.

The fusion of literature and nature speaks volumes. Almost literally. Bellevue Literary Press is showcasing this abundance in theirBLP Conversationsseries, featuring BLP authors in conversation with other professionals at the intersection of the arts and science, the neuroscientists, dramatists, psychiatrists, and historians of today. The series is a companion to BLP’s bookThe Poetic Species: A Conversation with Edward O. Wilson and Robert Hass.

Enter Cormac James and Philip Hoare, whose June 11 conversation was featured atLiterary Hub.

Philip Hoare

James (author of the Bellevue Literary Press novel The Surfacing) and Hoare (a notable nonfiction writer in the realm of nature and science) discussed the powerful metaphors in each other’s work, Moby Dick (of course), and the remarkable talents of whales.

Both authors use parts of nature as metaphor—in Hoar’s bookThe Sea Inside, he ponders that “Our bodies are as unknown to us as the ocean, both familiar and strange; the sea inside ourselves.”

The Surfacing by Cormac James

In response, James continued with another metaphor, and then onto the incredible theory present in Hoare’s work that whales may be able to perceive 3D pictures of the human inner life. In James’s words, “that for them, much as we often are for ourselves, we are solid blocks of emotions rather than mere knots of mechanical function.”

Beginning in 2014, the BLP Conversations has grown to nine installments, each available for freeonline.

Publishing is clearly not dead. In fact, despite all the doomsday prophecies over that past decade, publishing is alive and well. But author Kamila Shamsie is challenging the industry to make itself better—gender equality, people. On June 5, Shamsie published a provocation in the Guardian, with the basic premise being that “none of the new titles published in [2018] should be written by men.”

Kamila Shamsie, photo courtesy of the Guardian

The challenge has exploded online, and one publisher has already stepped up to the plate. The small British press And Other Stories has committed to publishing writing only by female writers for 2018.

And Other Stories publishes 10-12 books per year. But head publisher Stefan Tobler is hoping this will be a challenge to bigger publishing houses. In Shamsie’s words, “Provocation is one way to bring attention to the problem. Another is brightly coloured pie charts. I’m sure there are a score of others, waiting to be born.”

According to Sophie Lewis, senior editor at And Other Stories, “By taking on the challenge we . . . will end up becoming a kind of small-scale model for a much bigger inquiry about why women’s writing is consistently sidelined or secondary, the poor cousin rather than the equal of men’s writing.” In the op-ed piece she wrote for the Independent, Lewis hinted at least one other publisher will be joining in on the challenge, and hoped for more: “Sometimes there’s nothing better than a good provocation.”

Since selling its first book at 75 cents a copy in 1955, City Lights Publishers has made its mark on the literary world, and during BEA on May 28, Publishers Weekly took notice. The story in Publishers Weekly outlined the landmarks in City Lights’s 60 years of impact.

Allen Ginsberg, courtesy of Wikipedia

From Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, to the ensuing obscenity trial which cemented City Lights “as a defender of free speech and a publisher of innovative literature,” this publisher has been in the business of pushing literary boundaries.

The recentRad American Women A–Z, which “hit the #5 spot on the New York Times bestseller list on May 17, in the children’s middle-grade category,” shows that City Lights has plenty left to say.

In celebration of its 60th Anniversary, City Lights is featuring five titles:

By luck of the Irish, Madrid-based publisher Hispabooks got a sizeable mention in a May 29th story by Eileen Battersby in theIrish Times. Battersby highlighted the rich literary history of Spain (starting with Don Quixote de la Mancha by the legendary Miguel de Cervantes), and then profiled nine contemporary titles from Spain Spanish publishers.

Four of these titles are the literary love children (niños del amor) of Ana Pérez Galván and Gregorio Doval, Hispabooks founding editors. The titles highlighted—The Stein Report by Jose Carlos Llop, The Birthday Buyer by Adolfo Garcia Ortega, Uppsala Woods by Alvaro Colomer, and The Faint-Hearted Bolshevik by Lorenzo Silva—are exciting representations of what Hispabooks is all about: English translations of the best contemporary Spanish writing from writers working in one of Spain’s four languages.

And although English-language publishers remain “slow to take chances on literary fiction in translation . . . Hispabooks is proving that this no longer matters. Why wait on London or New York? Madrid is identifying quality literary fiction and making it available to a wider readership.” In the words of Battersby, “Readers are far more adventurous–publishers should stop underestimating us.”

Someone at Coffee House Press knows how to use Instagram well. For the week of May 11, Coffee House Press was the featured user for Real Pants (@actualpants), a blog and Instagram account that features key members of the literary world each week.

Anarchist publisher AK Press has been fighting to get back on its feet since a crushing fire last month that’s pushed the independent, radical press to ask for help. Now, they’ve got American punk rock band Green Day on their side.

Photo courtesy of rock985.com

In a historic turn of events, Green Day returned to 924 Gilman Street, an all-ages, collectively organized music club in Berkeley, CA, where Green Day got their start in the early nineties. They’ve been formally banned since 1994 (albeit, they stole the stage for an impromptu show in 2001), but 924 Gilman welcomed the trio back on May 17 for a benefit concert for AK Press, 1984 Printing, and individuals displaced by the March fire. And it’s getting a lot of attention from Rolling Stone, SPIN, NME, San Francisco Magazine, and Contra Costa Times.

The A.V. Club story on the show said that the benefit for AK Press showed, “that even though Green Day may have ostracized from the scene that bred it, it still cares about the people in that scene. It’s true what they say: Every time a holier-than-thou punk kid sings along to ‘Basket Case,’ a rock band gets its cred back.”

With Green Day, a lot of community support, and a fire in their bellies, AK Press is on its way back to fully functioning. According to the East Bay Express coverage of the event, “[During the show] AK Press handed out its latest book catalog. The introduction reads, ‘With support like this, it will make more than a fire to stop us.'”